Sports cars are more than just a way of getting from A to B. They express an individual’s identity, are a symbol of style and taste and are often an expression of wealth. With dozens and dozens of car brands on the sports car market, there’s certainly a lot to choose from.
Some sports car brands are better known than others with Italian sports cars tending to dominate the market and adorn more children’s bedroom walls than the German or American manufacturers. Perhaps it’s because the Italian approach is a bit different and they tend towards making cars that are less about practicality and more about the sheer fun of driving them. A good example is the Lamborghini Diablo.
The Lamborghini Diablo, with its scissor doors, has been one of the most iconic cars of the last 20 or 30 years. Its sleek lines and huge powertrain, not to mention a huge price tag, have made it an object of desire for many teenage boys and grown men throughout the world. Something that not many of those people have ever thought about this car, is how you go about reversing into a parking space, which is impractical, to say the least; and some might say impossible.
Anyone who’s spent time in a place like Monaco, which is littered with Lamborghinis, will have seen the site of a Lamborghini reversing with its scissor door up, and the driver leaning out of the car door to see behind them. Rear visibility through the tiny window was not really something designers took into account when making the car, because it’s made for speed and usually the scenery disappears over the horizon behind you fairly quickly.
That said, there’s a new wave of Italian sports car makers, like Maserati and Alfa Romeo, who are trying to make their luxury cars that little bit more comfortable. Something else which has changed the sports car market is the advent of the affordable supercar. German car manufacturers like Porsche set the tone when they released the Porsche Boxster and most of the other manufacturers followed suit with entry-level cars borrowing from their iconic and exclusive ranges of styling features. Alfa Romeo has taken this one step further with the launch of the Alfa Romeo 4C, which is the bridge between entry-level sports cars and the top-level Lamborghini or Ferrari supercar in terms of price, although performance far exceeds the Porsche Boxster type cars of the world.
The race to make the fastest car in the world has been won by the Bugatti Veyron for the last few years with its current Super Sport reaching top speeds of 257 mph, although this speed is electronically limited, and potentially the car could go faster. Top speed alone does not make a sports car. Sports cars are all about the desirability and the way they make the driver feel, which can’t be isolated to just one feature. It’s about the whole package and it’s something individual to the owner, which is why we have so many great cars being made to suit every desire. The chances are most of us will need to implement our money-saving tips for quite a long time to be able to afford one.
